KEYSOUND RECORDINGS (LDN023, 12” + digital)
The London underground is a complex affair and, in all honesty, very hard to classify. I suppose that's a good thing: the more “lost” you feel among the new releases every week, the clearer it becomes that the scene is healthy, with things happening faster than anyone can process. It's what comes to mind when listening to the first lashes of “Hot 4 U”, the A-side of the first 12” by Vibezinfor the Keysound label: it's like a volcano which suddenly erupts and spits out hard tropical rhythms (soca, mostly), crazy piano strokes and calibrated tributes to the early years of hardcore. It's not a strictly percussive track, unlike many of those by important post-dubstep artists; the diabolic polyrhythms come with the feeling of threat you get at isolated raves - flooded by bad drugs - with samples of the “let the bass kick” kind.
The B-side is equally ruff-neck; it's quarrelsome music, almost violent. In the case of “Mad Sick”, the raggamuffin references (through slow-motion drum’n’bass; it sounds like an old Bukem vinyl remixed by Untold) give an aggressive feel to a production which, essentially, looks for the space between beats with an escapist attitude. Then there's “Vicious”, another track with an old school vibe (early Goldie, before he founded Metalheadz) but slow and with ghostly, hysterical diva vocals. I don't know if Vibezin is symptomatic or an anomaly of the present underground (I hope for the latter); but it's obvious his music shows the path to the dark side.
Claude T. Hill
